I've just registered today, and looking through the Members List, I recognise some old friends from 'other' MSTS forums.

However, there are some I don't know, and many won't know me ! However, some do know me (Don, Geoff, Ian, etc.), but under my 'old' name of BrianB or BrianBS on other forums - so I thought this would be a good place for me to make myself known to those who do not know me. On this forum, I'm using my current MSTS name of ShortNorth (you'll see why later).

I've been with MSTS since it came out, but didn't really get with it fully until I bought TSM in late 2002 - then my MSTS life started to take off. Initially I concentrated on my favorite LMS stuff and made a few basic structures (terraces and warehouses, etc. on UKTS). Over the past years I've assisted a few well known MSTS route builders (Dave Corfield, Don Hinton, Geoff Holt, Dick Denyer to name a few), and have built many custom structures for their LMS based routes. Additionally, I spent a couple of years with 'Making Tracks', and built a number of custom stations and structures for the 'Great Eastern' and 'Scottish Capital Express' payware routes.

However, I grew up with NSWGR steam during the 50's and 60's and during the later years, I've 'drifted' away from LMS towards NSWGR. In this role I've been very active and have built a number of NSWGR routes (both co-authored with others, particularly Peter Newell of 'Coals to Newcastle', and as an individual author), made substantial amounts of NSWGR rolling stock and NSWGR and 'generic' Australian structures.

The name 'Short North' is the railwayman's name for the section of the Main North line that runs from Sydney to Newcastle (the most heavily trafficked section of line in NSW in steam days).

While I do have a fair 'bow-wave' of NSWGR stuff in the pipeline, I have not forgotten my love of the LMS, and from time to time will add to my LMS, and LMS constituents, output.

I think this forum is a very good idea, as it looks like it will help to pull together the remaining main MSTS players left in the sim - I found the other forums have tapered off to very little MSTS offerings in recent times. MSTS in Australia has all but died, only Peter and myself seem to be the only mainstream active authors left.

Long Live MSTS, and may that, together, we can keep it alive into the foreseeable future - or at least until OR becomes a full blown sim in its own right, with full editing tools. Then we may be able to give MSTS a final farewell. It has, and still is, serving us well !

Welcome to this new forum, which appears to be growing its membership on a steady basis. Obviously I have appreciated your MSTS past contributions both for LMS and NSWGR, and for these let me say thank you.

It's interesting your reference to the decline in MSTS activity in Australia, and I was wondering how this tied into the lack of significant activity on the Steam4me site?

Good morning everyone It's nice to see so many friends here from UKTSThanks to Alec for the referral to this forumI have been aware for some time that sadly UKTS seems to be losing it's way I'm not quite sure why that is? could it be that more and more(except me) are turning to facebookWhatever the reason I will be sure to pop by from time to timeKind regards Stephen

Picked up MSTS probably in about 2003/4 and didn't really get on with it much until I found Europeanbahn's London-Brighton Express add-on in my local GAME store a year or so later. That lead me eventually to UKTS where I have spent rather too much time over the last 6 and a bit years. I was fortunate to be involved with Making Tracks as a tester for a period including SCE & Greater Eastern - there are a few of my activities on the Greater Eastern disc. I've also assisted Dave Corfield with some stuff for what is, to me, the fabled Dorset Coast 6 DVD for UKTS (whether or not that will ever see the light of day is a great question).

I feel that I do differ from the majority of the remaining MSTS users around in that "modern era" is more my interest for simming than historic stuff; so don't expect me to have much to say about LNWR steam trains etc.

I would endorse Stephen's sentiments, and look forward to informative discussions about MSTS and it's future. In addition the additional threads could also prove both amusing and informative, as we hear about people's anecdotes and positive life experiences.

Hi Gentlemen,I'd like to thank Justin for his invitation to join this Forum, and apologise for being a little tardy in taking him up on it!

I think most members already know me, but for those who don't, here's a short(ish) account of my MSTS and PC curriculum vitae.

I first purchased MSTS in the early 2000s, can't remember exactly when, for a young member of the family who used to regularly stay with us. He didn't really take to it, but I can't blame him as the default routes and stock weren't very inspiring! After a couple of outings, it was just left "on the shelf" with him being more interested in Grand Theft Auto. It wasn't until after my good lady was taken from me in 2006, that I dug MSTS out again; I've always had an interest in railways, particularly of the steam variety. My first route was the Burton Derby CD (because I'm a Derby lad!) and from then on, I was hooked. In the intervening years, I've picked up a great deal of MSTS related knowledge, mostly from the Wizards at the UKTS Forums (Fora??) - thanks fellas!

On the personal computer side of things, I've always been interested in electronics and in 1979/1980 built one from a set of parts. It's possible that some of the more senior members here may remember seeing adverts for the UK101. It was based on the American Ohio Scientific Superboard II and had MS BASIC in ROM; over the next few years, many enhancements were produced for it, including floppy disks - 5.25inch!! (You can find details on Wikipedia!)In 1984/5 I bought a BBC Model B Micro, which was a great improvement over the UK101, but a couple of years later I replaced it with a BBC Master, mainly because an add-on was produced for it which would read IBM PC software (CP/M format)! In the early 1990s I had an IBM compatible PC built for me, which ran MSDOS 3.3; MSDOS 5 was a fantastic improvement and then came Windows 3 - WOW!! Since then, I've built my own - and they've all been cheaper than that first one!

First of all, a word of thanks to Bob Latimer for pointing me in the direction of this Forum after a long hiatus with UKTrainSim - it's good to see so many familiar names.

I have to confess my MSTS activity is somewhat reduced these days, but I am in touch with a young man who is busy breathing new life into the old FUDE route, so I am not completely out of it. I fired up the route editor the other day, and I was amazed at how small the windows seem on a modern computer!

I wonder whether you are planning to include Open Rails under the umbrella - I thought it might be the way forward, but, sadly, progress is slow, and I am dogged by graphics issues which no-one else seems to be experiencing - such is life.

Anyway, good luck to you all - I hope you can re-establish some kind of community spirit, sadly lacking elsewhere.

In the first instance this site is aimed at MSTS, albeit that it is a niche market, and I don't believe that we have considered incorporating specific reference to Open Rail. However over the next few weeks as the site continues to develope, I would anticipate at least a link to the Open Rail project.

peteworsley wrote:I wonder whether you are planning to include Open Rails under the umbrella - I thought it might be the way forward, but, sadly, progress is slow, and I am dogged by graphics issues which no-one else seems to be experiencing - such is life.

My thanks to Bob in pointing me in this direction for the forum and I hope that I may be able to continue building stock in the near future, though my output is somewhat lower these days with my long working days!

As a youngster I was brought up in Watford, and I must have been around 8 years old when I first ventured to Watford Junction for a day’s trainspotting. In 1949 rail travel and rail goods haulage were in their prime, and steam trains were everywhere. Watford Junction is on the mainline from Euston, and the ex-LMS Passenger Expresses to and from the Midlands and the North would pass through at speed. And what a speed! You would feel the vibrations as the trains approached, then the noise and the blur of engine and tender and coaches and then, after a few brief seconds, it was gone, leaving an eerie empty silence.At first it was difficult to catch the numbers or names, but soon you got used to following the train with your eyes as it passed. And then you recorded the numbers and names..........46100 Royal Scot, 46201 Princess Elizabeth, 46229 Duchess of Hamilton, 46230 Duchess of Buccleuch, 46235 City of Birmingham...........wonderful magical names! We saw so many - Coronations, Jubilees, Patriots, Royal Scots – all flying north to places like Crewe, or Liverpool, or Glasgow or south to Euston. Such an exciting experience!I left Watford in 1949, but used to return every summer during the school holidays until 1956. One year I recall seeing the new diesels 10000 and 10001, but I wasn’t very impressed – they were too quiet and didn’t belch steam and smoke! I spent a lot of time at the Junction during those holidays – there were no PC’s or Playstations in those days - and there was always a group of like-minded youngsters sitting on the high wall which gave us such a good viewing point. I can still remember one of the guys shouting out “ Oh no – not Duchess of Buccleuch again!” as the tail-end of another express rapidly disappeared from view. This particular Duchess was quite a regular at one period.1956 saw the end of my trainspotting days. I found other more important (and even more beautiful!) things to look at.............Then after spending a lifetime with no interest at all in railways, I picked up a copy of MSTS and suddenly my interest was rekindled. A chance to remember those beautiful LMS engines again – and Southern ones too, but that’s another story. Trainsims are a lot of fun, but you can’t beat the real thing, and I wish I could visit the mainline once more and be able to hear someone shout “Oh no – not Duchess of Buccleuch again”!

A bit of background from me...I was born in 1956, and my Dad worked on the railways. He was an engineer at the Viaduct wagon works in Earlestown. I remember as a young lad in the early 60's when not at school, I used to take the bus with my mum and meet my dad from work. There we would get the train back home to Golborne (it had a station then!) while my mum came back later after visiting my uncle (her eldest brother) who lived close to the works. However, my other uncle (dad's brother) was a fireman, working out of Dallam. When I was 8 years old, he picked me up early one Sunday morning on his scooter and took me to 'work'. There I rode on the footplate up to Carlisle and back (freight both ways). The journey itself was all a bit of a blur, as I was banished to a corner of the cab. However I do vividly remember having a totally black bacon & egg butty, cooked on the shovel! I never knew the loco, but my uncle did tell me years later that it's was 'Morning Star'. I really suspect that it wasn't, but it's always been nice to believe I lost real interest in trains in my early teens, but still always loved to travel by them. The 'spark' never dies!My interest was re-kindled many years later when msts was launched, and I soon found myself tinkering in the Route Editor. I purchased an add on 'Roundhouse' for some additional routes that it contained. I must confess to being totally underwhelmed (and somewhat ripped off) by what was on offer... and still to this day, other than the odd "for charity" CD, I've never bought another commercial add-on since! At the time my thoughts were "Terry, you can do better than that", and the rest is history...

Let me first say that I am not the troublemaker that someone has made me out to be. I think many of you know that already. That's the last I'll say on the subject as the wound is still very raw.

Background-wise I grew up in the North of England (a small town called Millom) in the 1950s and early 1960s, when steam was king. Spent a lot of my youth down at the station or at the turntable behind my parent's shop. I moved to Canada in 1964 with my parents and in 1987 I moved to New Zealand with my wife and son. Been here ever since and not intending to move. I got involved with the testing side of things, especially the file construction angle, early on and became lead beta tester for the now-defunct BlueArrow and later for Making Tracks.

I don't remember my first recollection of being fascinated by steam trains, but I was told how it started.

At the tender age of just under 2 years old My parents took me on a first family weekend camping expedition with a old Ariel 500cc motorcycle combo, a very basic ridge tent, a meths primus stove to make the tea and heat the baked beans.

The destination was Rhyl and on a camping site situated right next to the North Wales Coast Line. As expected being a summer Saturday in 1958, it was very very busy with big express trains and every time a train went past, I would scramble out of the tent to have a good look.

Thus started the fascination.

Then later the school I attended was next to the Sutton Park freight only line. Passenger services had ceased in 1965 but it was a very interesting route for the variety of first generation Diesels to be seen there.

A bit about my self, Born in Isleworth West Middlesex Hospital in 1948 grew up in Hanworth and then Isleworth,my Grandparents lived in Hounslow and there garden backed on to the Hounslow loop,that is where my interest in trains started,as a lot of steam freights to and from Feltham ran past,there was also a coal yard on the other side of the track.

I worked for BOAC from 1964 -1970 then got made redundant when BEA and BOAC merged to form BA some departments had already merged before the official merger and the department I worked for was one of them.

I went to South Africa and got a job with South African Railways (Zuid Afrikaans Spoorweg) at Pinetown Natal as it was then,also Mobeni Yard in Durban as a freight checker.In those days the main line to Johannesburg was electrified,the old main line beyond Pinetown wasn't so most freight trains were steam hauled by either 19D or 15F loco,the line from Durban to Port Shepstone was steam hauled mostly 19D and the North Coast line to Eshowe was Garrett hauled.There were 3 lines from Pietermartzburg one went to Eshowe and steeply graded so most trains were double headed by GMAM Garrett's,then there was the narrow gauge line to Harding which was 2ft 6in and had small Garretts,there are 3 of them now on the Welsh Highland Line from Caernafon to Portmadog,and the 3rd the main line to Johannesburg from Durban,working for the railways I got to travel all over South Africa.

When I returned to the UK I worked for Hounslow Council,for 14 years then worked as a cargo agent at Heathrow,until 2000,when my wife had a brain tumour,she died in 2003,in 2004 I got MSTS to help pass the time,since then I've had 2 PE's and 2 Strokes,so I have had plenty of time to fiddle around with MSTS.

I will get my state pension in 5 months time,since 2011 I have got a new partner called Kira and she is from Estonia,I also have 2 cats Tiggie 11 and Blackie 3

Mike

Last edited by mikehendle on Sun 03 Feb 2013, 11:45 am; edited 1 time in total

Well here goes. I was born in Isleworth. I lived and was educated in Hounslow and Isleworth, gaining a degree in Civil Engineering. I first worked in London - building what is now the Home Office, before moving to Newcastle where I worked on design for the Tyne and Wear Metro and a number of bridges. I moved to the NW where I was involved in nuclear power station design, after which I spent 4 years in Saudi before returning to the NW. Again I worked on nuclear power station design and after a spell in the water industry I am now back in the nuclear design industry.We'll ignore the disastrous first marriage, but my second one has brought me great happiness.When very young I had a clockwork train set that was my pride and joy, but I can never remember what happened to it.I really got into trains when I went to the NE, trying my hand at model railways and joining the local RCTS for weekend train spotting trips. I always enjoyed the trips back down south behind a Deltic!It was only when I settled down with my second wife that I re-generated my interest in trains, and as I couldn't afford a model railway I tried MSTS and the rest is well documented in the UKTS forums and now here on the TS Forums.My ambition is to finish the FG DMU project to the best standard that I can achieve, although that might not be to that of someone else.I hope that through this forum I can re-establish many virtual friendships.

peteworsley wrote:I wonder whether you are planning to include Open Rails under the umbrella - I thought it might be the way forward, but, sadly, progress is slow, and I am dogged by graphics issues which no-one else seems to be experiencing - such is life.

Unfortunately I am unable to use my username from UKTS (johny). However, Justin has given me this one, it's pretty close.

For the newer members of the MSTS world, I have been involved with MSTS since Dec 2001, mostly in the area of signalling, both commercially and freeware. Like Bob Latimer I was involved with Blue Arrow until its demise, I built and installed the signals in their Southern Region add on. I also built the signals used by Peter Newell on his Coals to Newcastle route. These days I just keep a watching brief on what's happening MSTS-wise, but I am always available for scripting queries and problems.

Hi all,Thankyou so much for the invite to this forum. I feel very privileged to be a part of it! I too got MSTS when it first came out and have gotten into it in a big way recently by creating my first ever activity. As Ged (Slipperman12) my fantastic tester will know, it isn't a simple process.I too am an IT Hardware guy thru and thru fixing anything really.... PC, Laptops, Printers, Plotters.I have been a 3rd man at the MHR in Hampshire and plan on going back down there firing when I can soon as time allows. My Dad was an Nine Elms Engineman Firing and driving right at the end of steam. We are often attending Nine Elms Reunions at the Bluebell in August (Each year)Anyway, thanks once again.Best WishesAndy

Registered this morning once I found out how too.... Dam ipad and mobile version had no register links etc lol,

Many will know me as steveenefer from ukts and like many I visit on a daily basis but with work life been chaos I haven't had chance to contribute for a while something I hope will change shortly I have got some 37s hiding away somewhere hehe.

ATM I have no access to anything as I'm living with the inlaws and all ,y stuff is in storage sigh can't wait to get home once the renovations are done.

Being one of the senior citizens on this forum, I was born in Radcliffe near Bolton in Feb 1944. At the age of six, my old man won a few thousand quid on the football pools (quite a lot in those days) so he bought a grocers shop in Southport and that is were I grew up. By the time I was ten in 1954, I got into the most popular hobby of train spotting and had a Hornby Dublo train set comprising of three rail A4 Sir Nigel Gresley and 3 teak tinplate coaches and a large oval of track and a few sidings on a 8ft x 4ft board in a spare bedroom. Train spotting at Southport was a pretty dull affair, mostly non named locos, except for the 6pm from Manchester Victoria, arriving at Southport usually dead on 7pm, always hauled by a Jubilee. Conquerer, Jutland, Mars, Tobago, were usually seen but occasionally a Patriot was seen instead, Rhyl comes to mind.So my mates and I decided to travel to Liverpool or Preston, to widen our train spotting experiences, where the larger engines could be seen. Our usual Saturday journey to Preston, just cost us a penny return, against the normal fare of 1 and ninepence in the old currency. What we did was purchase a platform ticket, so we could get onto the platform (train spotting on the platforms was allowed in those days) but we decided to get on the Preston Train (suburban single compartments, no ticket inspectors lol) and then get off at Preston for a days train spotting. If any one asked for our platform ticket, we had one, which in those days were exactly the same for all regional stations. Now we were in business, Royal Scotts, Prinny Royals, Corronations, Britts, you name it, all came through Preston on their way to London or Glasgow. At the end of the day, back on the train to Southport, handing in our platform tickets at the barrier. I'm sure they knew we had been to Preston, but in those days, no one bothered, they were just doing there boring old job of collecting tickets.When I was seventeen, I joined the Royal Navy and travelled the world, ending up on submarines. Later in life I moved to Leek in Staffordshire and joined the North Staffordshire Railway Society (now the Churnet Valley Railway Ltd) as a volunteer. I then moved to Tamworth in 1990 having been made redundant as a Boiler Operator for the NHS. When MSTS came out, I decided to purchase a copy and soon got fed up with the default routes as everyone else did, until I joined UKTrainsim in 2003. In those days, there wasn't many add on routes, but within twelve months, many new routes were becoming available to download and locos and rolling stock were ever growing for this wonderful sim. Eventually I got into simple activity creation in the activity editor and later had a go with the route editor, without much success at first. At this time trams were appearing on MSTS, and the Blackpool Tramway Route by Big Verne was built. I had always been fascinated with the old trams from my younger days, when they were still running in Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Glasgow, as well as Blackpool (throughout the town in those days). As my route building skills were not what you call good, I was pretty competent at adding scenery and objects, track laying and signalling skills being a problem and still is. I asked Verne if I could add more scenery to his Blackpool Tramway Route just to make it more enjoyable, this was at the time when most of the Blackpool Tramway fleet was available for MSTS don by Chris Lindop and a few others. So I set my sights on recreating the Famous Fleetwood Tram Sunday Event as the theme for the enhancement, which received more than 600 downloads. I then tinkered on the idea of doing a version for the Blackpool Illuminations, and managed to get someone to make all the illumination objects, so that I could make a start in building it. This too was a great success and was finally put on CD together with the Tram Sunday version as well. The Illuminations version being the icing on the cake, as this is the only route available for MSTS that was meant solely for night time running and as far as I know still is.Recently, I joined up with Don Hinton, into finishing the well known Scottish Central Route (with its magnificent Forth & Tay Bridges) This route was always one of my favourites and never actually got finished after Kerr went to Making Tracks. I approached Kerr and asked him if I could have a go at finishing the route and he said he would be delighted to see it finished and that I could do whatever I liked with it as long as he got initial credits. So the Scottish Central Plus Rout was born. I got Don on board and we decided not only just to finish it, but to add to it and make it a steam era route for the late fifties to late sixties, thus allowing diesel locos to run as well. As you all know, the route was finished almost twelve months ago and Don and I have discussed about extending it north to Aberdeen and south to Newcastle at sometime in the future, we will have to see. For the past eight years, I have been a members of the Echills Wood Minature Railway, in Kingsbury Water Park, not far from where I live and spend quite a lot of my retirement time there.

I have always had an interest in railways for most of my life. MSTS still remains one of my interests and yes I have had a dabble with Railworks like most of us have, but I just can't get into it somehow, so I am sticking with MSTS and later maybe be Open Rails as well, when it becomes fully developed, or until I pop my clogs.I am so grateful to Justin for setting this forum up, as us dedicated MSTS fans can keep in touch without any intrusion from the other sim.

Geoff STEAM will ALWAYS be King! It gave us our Great British railway network, which we all enjoy through simulation

I got into MSTS not long after my dad died, probably part of the grieving process as his life was all about the railways (he even helped rescue a steam engine from Barry and saw it running before ill health took over).

I'd lost interest in railways in my teens but was never far from it due to dad's passion for trains. Anyhow, I tried Trainz first, didn't like it and then swapped it for my nephew's copy of MSTS. I liked it better than Trainz, but the content was poor. It didn't take long to find UKTS and that's where my passion for MSTS took off .

However, just running acts bored me after a while and I wanted to do more. David Carmont, the original Glas-Car author, got in touch and asked if I would like to test the route as I'd shown an interest on the forums, and so I came aboard for V2. All I had to was test it and find errors.

Then I finally got into the creative side. David was unable to do any acts for the route, so I dived right in and learned how to do activities. They were pretty simple to start off with and once I got the basics down, it allowed me to start doing acts for other routes. Once you get the creative bug you want to do more and re-skinning was not too far behind. The talent pool on the forums was great back then and I got so much help, especially from the MT guys; Buffy500, Champy, steve enefer and backfoot2002.

I even dabbled on the commercial side for a while, including working on the EH2 pack. David had begun building V3 of Glas-Car but for reasons I can't go into, decided he could not finish off the route. He asked if I fancied taking it over. I knew absolutely nothing about working in RE but once again, the members on UKTS got me started.

I decided that if I was going to do it, I'd like to learn about scenery because I wanted to give it a makeover to such an extent that people were drawn to the route. For a few months I worked in secret as I wanted to just mess about with the route and see if I could actually do it. After a while I got better at it and decided what the hell, I'm going to give it a go!

The project really kicked into life when Derek (sundaypm) came on board. His models took the route to a new level and I had to work harder to compliment the scenery around his stations! Very grateful to have had his help.

Glas-Car V3 is something I am so proud of and now we finally get to why I chose this route. I come from a Scottish family. As a kid I would take the ferry from Dunoon to Gourock and then ride in a 303 or 311 from Gourock up to Glasgow, where my dad and I would go trainspotting around the city and beyond. In those days the units were unrefurbished so we would run from the ferry to the front of the train so we could get the front seats and see the same view as the driver along the line.

Unfortunately it was only during the school holidays as Dad had got a job in London, but to this day I've gone back up there as much as possible. In fact, building Glas-Car has meant I've gone back more than ever as I always spend a couple of days visiting stations for research.

I've had some amazing experiences regarding trains throughout my life, but the happiest memories were in Scotland with my dad and I knew that if I wanted to honour his memory and leave a legacy in MSTS, it would be from doing the Glasgow-Carlisle route. I had long wanted to see Gourock and Wemyss Bay in MSTS and here was my chance to make it happen.

I honestly believe it was good therapy and now each anniversary gets a little easier and if there is such a thing as an afterlife, I hope he's proud of what I've done. I have to admit that I shed a few tears when V3 was finally up on UKTS. It'd been a labour of love and I'd given up thousands of hours to get it done.

As for V4, that was just the continuation of the creative cycle. I wanted to see if I could lay a few miles of track. Yes, there might be some minor differences and perhaps the gradients won't be accurate in places, but before I give up on simming I want to say, "I built a route, and I damned proud of it!". And besides, if there was ever a V5, I've learnt so much about route-building along the way!!!

NiallI am very grateful that you have shared that with us, as I am also grateful for your fine development of Glasgow-Carlisle. I have always been slightly behind the times and hence the fact that I have V2 of this route in my system. Since becoming involved in TSSH my own FG DMU work has had to take a smaller proportion of the available MSTS time, but please be assured that your efforts will be duly recorded as part of my proposed Routes Directory.Alec

Good afternoon folks. My name is Stephen, and I hail out of Sacramento, California. My main interests in MSTS are also shared in the other sim. I happen to be a route developer and a intermediate modeler. Thanks for allowing me to be here (Mods) and I hope to be on good terms with all.

Here's the content of a PM received from another one of our new members from across the pond. His forum name is "Steveesq" and is very welcome to join us here

Thanks for allowing me to be part of the Forum, to which I was introduced by a note on trainsim.com. I was given MSTS three or four years ago by a friend who couldn't figure out how to use it (just didn't have the patience). I have always loved trains but don't care much for PC games, xbox, etc. But I was intrigued so I installed it and I have been addicted ever since. It's been a great ride. Being an American (Long Island, New York), my main focus is this part of the world, but I have also multiple MSTS installations for British, French, German, other European, and Australian routes and rolling stock. I most appreciate the generosity of others who share their routes and equipment models as well as advice. Route building and modelling are two areas that I have not yet learned but want to start and hopefully I can contribute my own stuff some day.

Greetings to all and thanks for a great forum. Mike PMd me about it and here i am, in good company it looks i see a lot of familiar names and am very happy to be here. I got my love of the rails from my family first, my grandfather worked on one of the larger routes in the US, as a steam fitter and i loved trains from when i was a lad..and i do remember the days of steam. I first came to the UK in the 1970s ..was at Oxford for some years at university in the days of British Rail Blue and Gray..and took those trains many times and often. I had no clue about sims or computers in fact, as i became a artist and have been for some 45 years but about 15 years ago began a carer as a book publisher and had to learn the comp world...and then a little over a decade ago, got my own first computer and my tech was a gamer nut..he loaded me up with a bunch and i found MSTS on my own. It was love at first sight, a chance to experience history, rails and to even make new things. Over the years i have apprenticed to several of the master stock and route makers to start to learn the trade and have begun a number of serious route projects and hope to bring some out soon. I also make buildings, ships and rollling stock, usually repaints as i am not the best at TSM but i have most of the 3d making programs i am just a visual person and find the tech details a bit hard at times. I love the depth of the MSTS UK universe and am slowly learning more about both operations (driving and operating the routes and trains) and making them...and hope to contribute and learn more. Hi to all who I know and who i have yet to know. You will find most of my content at Elvas Tower but i will post some here too as there is time. Cheer and all the best to all hands.

Sorry, I have been missing since Tuesday night, My broadband is down, managed to log in to a local WiFi hotspot (for now) till my own broadband is up and running again.

EDIT:That free WiFi only lasted an hour then I got a message from BT to either log into my account or register and buy some on-line time, so I bought a 5 day pass, my own broadband should be up and running again by then.

At least that down time allowed me time to fix a few activities in MSTS

I thought I'd add my introduction to the page, particularly as some of you have already helped me.

My name is Stephen Bowness. I live in Auckland, New Zealand (moved here from England in 1982) and I'm relatively new to MSTS. I've actually had the program CD-ROM sitting on my desk for some time as I've had a copy of the KWVR v1 addon for ages. It was the search for v2 and the kind assistance of Bob Latimer that brought me here. Everything was intalled over Christmas and I've been happily discovering MSTS and OR since then.

I have a long relationship with KWVR. My uncle first took me there in the late 60s not long after it opened when I was 3 or 4. As my aunt and second uncle (she remarried) still live in Haworth, I get to spend some time there every time I travel back and I've been a member for the last few years.

I also have an interest in the GNR Queensbury Lines that were closed to passenger traffic in 1955 and pulled up in the 60s and 70s. They were a remarkable piece of engineering and we've spent some time over the last few trips exploring the remnants, some of which are now part of the Great Northern Trail from Cullingworth to Queensbury. Some bits require a little bit of rambling across the countryside and a bit of urbex at the Keighley end. It's been a real revelation to compare what's there now with the sim version and it provides a lot of insight.

Other than that, I work for one of the banks in NZ in the Business Improvements/IT space. For a number of years I was NZ's leading American Football referee before stepping away from the game a couple of years ago. I sing in Auckland Cathedral Choir. This is my second stint, having sung there from 1982-1994.

Thank you Stephen for that. It is always pleasing to hear a little about what fellow simmers do in both the real world and the world of train simulation! We may be a small forum community, but we do our best to be friendly and helpful.

Hi Stephen,Welcome to the MSTS band of brothers,it's always nice to hear from a new member,instead of some defecting to the otherside,if you have problems just ask and some one usually will be able to help you.Mike

Hi Stephen,Welcome to the new world of us Very Friendly MSTS and OR Simmers. If you need any help or Guidance then I guess we are your first port of call! Hope you enjoy it here at TSSH!All the bestAndy